Geisha Kow­lessar

There are some 212 va­can­cies for deans of sec­ondary schools and 273 for heads of de­part­ment, but these are far from be­ing filled, as the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is find­ing it dif­fi­cult to get suit­ably-qual­i­fied peo­ple. The mat­ter was raised by Sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan dur­ing yes­ter­day's sit­ting of a joint se­lect com­mit­tee at the Par­lia­ment cham­ber.

These fig­ures, which were com­piled by the com­mis­sion, re­flect­ed the po­si­tion as at Feb­ru­ary 8. De­scrib­ing the va­cant posts as sig­nif­i­cant, Ramkhelawan al­so asked why out­stand­ing va­can­cies had not been ad­ver­tised by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry. In re­sponse, the com­mis­sion's chair­man Hy­acinth Guy ad­mit­ted it was chal­leng­ing to find suit­able can­di­dates.

"All of these po­si­tions were ad­ver­tised in 2010 and we con­duct­ed in­ter­views in 2011," she said. "We find we are not get­ting per­sons with the re­quired skills and com­pe­ten­cies to move in­to these po­si­tions from the teacher train­ing es­tab­lish­ment." She said apart from nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions, which would re­quire a de­gree in the par­tic­u­lar area, the can­di­date must have at least five years of ex­pe­ri­ence in an ad­min­is­tra­tive area.

The lat­ter, Guy added, was the par­tic­u­lar prob­lem. "We are not find­ing peo­ple with ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, even though we take in in­for­mal ex­pe­ri­ence. For in­stance, if a prin­ci­pal has some­one act­ing in a po­si­tion in­for­mal­ly, we take that in­to con­sid­er­a­tion," she said. "But we are not find­ing that hap­pen­ing." She said the com­mis­sion on­ly found a hand­ful of peo­ple who were apt and the min­istry was asked to read­ver­tise the po­si­tions.

In ex­plain­ing the process, Guy said the com­mis­sion first had to ask the min­istry to ad­ver­tise the po­si­tions, the ad and the list of can­di­dates would then be ap­proved by the com­mis­sion, and that would re­layed back to the min­istry for the ads to be placed. "We have done this ex­er­cise since last year and that ad­ver­tise­ment hasn't been placed," Guy said.

When Ramkhelawan asked why the com­mis­sion could not place the ad with­out de­pend­ing on the min­istry, Guy said this was the pro­ce­dure ac­cord­ing to the reg­u­la­tion. "We must work with the min­istry...they must come along with us," she said. Ramkhelawan, how­ev­er, said to avoid red tape, some things should be done by the com­mis­sion in­stead of the min­istry.

Guy said the com­mis­sion was in the process of up­dat­ing its reg­u­la­tions, which were ex­pect­ed to be fi­nalised in the com­ing months. At present, the com­mis­sion is gov­erned by reg­u­la­tions dat­ing back to the 1960s.